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Oscar Robertson to get statue at Attucks: 'Important we continue to honor our heroes.'
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- Oscar Robertson to get statue at Attucks: 'Important we continue to honor our heroes.'
An Indiana Farm Bureau commercial in the mid-1980s depicted a young Oscar Robertson running around outside in his neighborhood, pretending to shoot a basketball with an old tin can.
The commercial wraps with his mother surprising a young, smiling Oscar with a new basketball of his own. That is pretty close to how Robertson, 85, remembers it happening more than seven decades ago.
Rendering of Oscar Robertson statue announced by the NBA and Pacers on Thursday night. The statue will be unveiled at Crispus Attucks in 2025.
Mazell Bell Robertson, a domestic worker, brought a basketball home for her youngest son from the family she worked for. He does not remember how old he was, exactly. Maybe 10. Maybe 11. But he remembers the moment he received his own basketball.
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"She said, 'Oscar come here, I've got something for you,'" Robertson said. "It was a tremendous gift."
A gift not only to Robertson, who would go to become the most decorated basketball player from Indiana when considering all three levels of the sport – high school, college and professional – but to the game of basketball. At Crispus Attucks, he led his all-Black school to two state championships. He won Mr. Basketball in 1956. In college at the University of Cincinnati, he led the nation in scoring three times, earned All-American honors and was named the national player of the year, leading his team to two Final Fours.
And in the NBA, Robertson's name is still synonymous with remarkable versatility. In 1961-62, his second year in the league with the Cincinnati Royals, he became the first player to average a triple-double (30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, 11.4 assists) for a season . In his 14-year NBA career with Cincinnati and the Milwaukee Bucks, Robertson was a 12-time All-Star, won an MVP (1964) and an NBA championship (1971).
"The Big O is simply a heroic figure in the basketball world," said former Detroit Pistons' star Joe Dumars, now the executive vice president and head of basketball operations for the NBA. "He's someone that I have tremendous admiration for on and off the court. I'm happy to see him getting his flowers. The Big O was just incredible and think it's important that we continue to honor our heroes."
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With the NBA All-Star game in Robertson's hometown this weekend, the league, in partnership with Pacers Sports & Entertainment, announced Thursday night that it has commissioned a statue to honor Robertson, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer. NBA commissioner Adam Silver made the announcement at The Tip-Off at Bicentennial Unity Plaza with Robertson on stage.
"Oscar Robertson's legendary basketball journey began in Indianapolis where he led Crispus Attucks High School to the first state championship in the country won by an all-Black team," Silver said. "We are thrilled to join the Pacers in commissioning a statue in recognition of Oscar's extraordinary impact on the game and his hometown."
Once completed, the statue will be permanently placed at Crispus Attucks, the school where it all started. Robertson, getting his first look at the statue, which depicts him wear a West No. 1 All-Star jersey and shooting a basketball, caught himself looking back to his childhood. It will be unveiled during a ceremony in 2025.
"I thank the Pacers and the NBA," Robertson said. "I don't want to get too emotional, but you think about all the years that you played and, as a matter of fact, I thought about my mother giving me that basketball. It's a wonderful memory."
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The west side neighborhood where Robertson grew up, including the famous Dust Bowl court outside the public housing project, Lockefield Gardens, is now part of the IUPUI campus. But the Dust Bowl, originally a dirt court, was a vitally important piece of the City's basketball legacy. Police Athletic League leader Anthony Watkins started a tournament there in 1945 and it was continued by James "Bruiser" Gaines. Many if not most of the city's Black star players in the 1950s and '60s, including Robertson, honed their skills at the Dust Bowl.
"I was too young to play with the guys sometimes," said Robertson, the youngest of three brothers behind Bailey Jr. and Henry. "So, I would shoot by myself. But I would go when I was younger and there were just some real athletes. I'd watch what they would do with the basketball. Then I started to work and gain my confidence shooting the ball. In the park, there were a lot of shot blockers. It was amazing to me how many good athletes there were."
Todd Taylor, president and chief commercial officer for Pacers Sports & Entertainment, said the Robertson statue "is a way to honor the All-Star connection between the NBA and Indianapolis."
"Oscar Robertson is one of the greatest players in the history of the game, so I think it made it an easy choice," Taylor said. "I don't know when we'll have the All-Star game here again, so it is nice to leave something behind that has a lot of meaning here."
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Sculptor Ryan Feeney, an Indianapolis firefighter who owns metal working company Indy Art Forge, was tabbed to create the Robertson statue. There are elements of Robertson's basketball career literally built into the design. The base of the statue is designed after the 1955 state championship trophy won by Crispus Attucks against Gary Roosevelt. The metal for the bronze piece was sourced from Casting Art & Technology in Cincinnati, where Robertson played his college ball and started his NBA career. And the statue depicts Robertson wearing his No. 1 West All-Star jersey.
"I'm excited about reintroducing Oscar to a whole new generation of fans," Taylor said. "When you look at Indiana and the 'We grow basketball here' motto, he's one of the greatest ever to come from here."
Feeney has created several pieces in Indiana, including the Peyton Manning sculpture outside Lucas Oil Stadium and the bronze eagle atop the Indianapolis 9/11 memorial, among others.
James Cadogan, the executive director of the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, said Robertson's legacy should also be remembered beyond basketball. The coalition was formed in 2020 to bring attention to social justice issues, but Robertson was on the forefront of those battles decades earlier.
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"Oscar was one of those voices that was really important," Cadogan said. "He came up in a time when high school basketball was still segregated in some areas. Then in the 1970s and '80s in the NBA, there was a new vision and model for free agency. Economic empowerment is a huge part of his legacy, along with athletes standing up for what they believe is right."
Robertson said he rarely interacted with a white person through high school other than local writers like Bob Collins, Wayne Fuson and Jimmy Angelopoulos. His teachers, neighbors classmates and teammates were Black.
"I hadn't really been out in the world," he said. "Basketball helped. But the education I got from Crispus Attucks and at Cincinnati was important, too. I was able to travel different places around the country and then was part of the Olympics (in 1960 in Rome). I made a lot of friends there. That's where I met Muhammad Ali, who was still Cassius Clay at the time."
Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson and John Wooden were honored at halftime, along with 47 other Indiana basketball greats.
Ali and Robertson were both proponents for social justice at a time when it could have been easier to stay silent. It was through his involvement with the National Basketball Players Association that he eventually became the head of the players union for nine years, until his retirement from the NBA in 1974. After a six-year battle, the 6-5 Robertson stood tall in the courtroom when the "Oscar Robertson rule" paved the way for modern free agency.
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Jerry West, who went head-to-head against Robertson in the NBA, spoke to Sports Illustrated in 2020 about the Big O as a trailblazer off the court.
"I always admired his game, of course, but what was most admirable about Oscar was his willingness to speak out," West told Sports Illustrated. "It was much harder to do that back in our day, and very few had the courage that Oscar did."
In that story, legendary writer Jack McCallum writes of Robertson's story as the anti-Hoosiers' tale. "The kid who was the wrong color and lived on the wrong side of town and had to claw and scratch his way to the pantheon in a state where white players with 'fundamentally sound' games," McCallum wrote, naming Homer Stonebraker, Stretch Murphy, Bobby Plump, Rick Mount, Larry Bird, Steve Alford and Damon Bailey.
"Robertson should be viewed through the lens of a man who grew up hard, scarred by racism and a thousand little cuts, who used them for fuel, refusing to yield, refusing to forget," McCallum wrote. "And in terms of his legacy, he paid a price for that."
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Robertson, who moved with his family from Clarksville, Tenn., to Indianapolis before his second birthday, looks back at his childhood with pride.
"It means everything to me," he said of Indianapolis and Crispus Attucks. "It's where I grew up, where I grew academically and athletically. I grew up around great people and had great teachers. (Coach) Ray Crowe had all the guys in homeroom. If you didn't come to class, you didn't come to practice."
High school basketball stars from 1955: Oscar Robertson, Willie Hampton and Willie Merriweather of Crispus Attucks.
Robertson felt like a kid again when Crispus Attucks reached the Class 3A state championship in 2017. When Jamal Harris skied for a putback with 0.9 seconds remaining to give Attucks a 73-71 win over Twin Lakes, Robertson leapt to his feet and raised both hands in the air. He waved a gold Tigers' towel and placed the championship medals around the necks of the Attucks' players when it was over.
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It was a full circle moment for Robertson, who was disappointed when the high school was converted to a middle school in 1986. It reopened as a high school in 2006, but did not find its footing as a basketball power again until that moment at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.
"I enjoyed it so much," Robertson said with a chuckle. "When (Harris) put the ball back in the basket, I was just so happy for those guys. I knew what it meant to win a championship. I just wanted it for them."
Robertson is back in Indianapolis for All-Star weekend. Home again. He would not mind coming back every year around this time.
"I don't see why not," he said. "Indianapolis is such a great spot with all the hotels right there and Indiana always has such great support for basketball. I think they should have the All-Star game in Indianapolis every year."
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: NBA, Pacers announce statue to honor Oscar Robertson at Crispus Attucks
